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Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

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Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#121

Post by hibikir »

rrecuero wrote: post #111

Former H1-B Worker as well. I was sponsored by Zynga Inc and Moz. Finally got my green card recently. As other people have pointed out above, I believe the problem relies on who is sponsoring these candidates. The following list speaks by itself: 1 Infosys: 23,816 2 Tata Consultancy Services 14,096 3 Wipro 8,365 4 IBM 7,944 5 Deloitte Consulting 7,016 Google, Facebook, Amazon and even Tesla or Palantir should be in t…

But it would also filter out most of the people outside of the Bay Area, New York and Chicago. In Missouri, for instance you aren't paying 100K to someone that isn't pretty darned senior: 65-70K is a competitive salary right out of school around here. So a recent foreign graduate would have to move to the bay.

We also have to understand that consulting companies are pretty great options when you want to get a green card (although not necessarily the big ones): If you are a consultant, and you work for a company doing layoffs, your consulting firm won't drop you like a rock, and might be interested in getting you another gig. If the same thing happens to you when you are working directly for a company, you have a much smaller clock before you should leave the country. When a Green Card wait can be 10 years, the chances you'll work for a company that has a few rounds of layoffs are very high.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#122

Post by Clubber »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #82
_audakel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define "fair" in fair market wage? If foreign talent = domestic talent and foreign wage = domestic wage; is there a compelling reason to hire foreign? And if being hired = increase worker happiness, than equal pay will decrease foreign worker happiness. If all people are equal than whos happiness should we optimize for?

How do you define "fair" in fair market wage? It eventually has to come down to, "I'm an American, so I'm entitled to get paid more than everybody else on the planet for doing a given job." I find that attitude pretty disgusting, but that's just me. The same people who complain endlessly about H1Bs, outsourcing, and cheap foreign labor will then cheerfully drive to Wal-Mart and buy a new DVD player for $12. It will n…

Yes, but US labor and citizens fought generations for those wages. Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars, company / labor riots, taxes to subsidize industry, taxes for infrastructure, taxes for education, legal systems, all that. US taxpayers paid for our economy through blood and toil.

You don't think high wages just happen because companies feel generous do you?

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#123

Post by rrecuero »

hibikir wrote: post #121
rrecuero wrote: post #111

Former H1-B Worker as well. I was sponsored by Zynga Inc and Moz. Finally got my green card recently. As other people have pointed out above, I believe the problem relies on who is sponsoring these candidates. The following list speaks by itself: 1 Infosys: 23,816 2 Tata Consultancy Services 14,096 3 Wipro 8,365 4 IBM 7,944 5 Deloitte Consulting 7,016 Google, Facebook, Amazon and even Tesla or Palantir should be in t…

But it would also filter out most of the people outside of the Bay Area, New York and Chicago. In Missouri, for instance you aren't paying 100K to someone that isn't pretty darned senior: 65-70K is a competitive salary right out of school around here. So a recent foreign graduate would have to move to the bay. We also have to understand that consulting companies are pretty great options when you want to get a green c…

That's a good point. It would obviously need to be a more complicated system. I think it would be good to prioritize companies like Google, Facebook and the likes but good, honest consulting companies shouldn't be excluded. Factors like innovation, skill scarcity and wage/cost of living can be weighed in.

That happened to me. I actually was at Zynga when they closed studios and I needed to start my green card application from scratch.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#124

Post by jmspring »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #80
nwhybrid wrote: post #77

As a former H1-B worker myself (please put down the pitch-forks :)), I can tell you that regular companies aren't hiring H1-Bs to replace you directly. Instead they contract swarms of us through companies like WiPro and other body shops. This, along with the inability to seek a more fitting job on your own regardless of skill level is the main problem I see. You're essentially shackled to these body shops. You can't…

Is it a common reaction to raise pitchforks at H1-B's? I mostly feel sorry for workers on visa. They don't have the flexibility I do to change jobs if they're not happy. That would be the absolute worst for me, as someone who is always looking for a better gig.

WiPro, Disney, IBM, and others are the face of the "bring people in on a visa to train your job for offshore" -- WiPro often being the body shop.

In this instance it isn't the category of Visa, per say, but how immigrant visas are being used.

OP makes a good point about being shackled to a company. The bigs (MSFT, others), don't seem to do such, but the body shops certainly do take advantage of the situation.

Really, if you look at visas granted by company, those at the top are often body shops and should be both ineligible and required to pay significantly more.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#125

Post by CamperBob2 »

Clubber wrote: post #122
CamperBob2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define "fair" in fair market wage? It eventually has to come down to, "I'm an American, so I'm entitled to get paid more than everybody else on the planet for doing a given job." I find that attitude pretty disgusting, but that's just me. The same people who complain endlessly about H1Bs, outsourcing, and cheap foreign labor will then cheerfully drive to Wal-Mart and buy a new DVD player for $12. It will n…

Yes, but US labor and citizens fought generations for those wages. Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars, company / labor riots, taxes to subsidize industry, taxes for infrastructure, taxes for education, legal systems, all that. US taxpayers paid for our economy through blood and toil. You don't think high wages just happen because companies feel generous do you?

Your post is precisely what I mean by "entitlement." 500 million not-so-red Chinese don't give a hoot about the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars, company / labor riots, taxes to subsidize industry, taxes for infrastructure, taxes for education, legal systems, all that.

To understand the position of workers in the rest of the world, see above.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#126

Post by Dwolb »

dietrichepp wrote: post #40
Dwolb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said in another way, capital is fungible but labor is not. This means capital can flow readily to the lowest cost suppliers and workers but workers cannot flow readily to higher paying employers. This leads to a mismatch where, temporarily, employers can capture higher-skilled workers at lower costs. Another comment, how are anti-disparagement clauses not a violation of first amendment rights?

> Another comment, how are anti-disparagement clauses not a violation of first amendment rights? This is a common misunderstanding of the first amendment. It's a short amendment, shorter than your comment, so you might as well just read the amendment.

Ah thanks for the advice :)

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#127

Post by Dwolb »

nostrademons wrote: post #90
Dwolb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said in another way, capital is fungible but labor is not. This means capital can flow readily to the lowest cost suppliers and workers but workers cannot flow readily to higher paying employers. This leads to a mismatch where, temporarily, employers can capture higher-skilled workers at lower costs. Another comment, how are anti-disparagement clauses not a violation of first amendment rights?

> Another comment, how are anti-disparagement clauses not a violation of first amendment rights? First amendment applies to Congress (and after the 14th amendment, the state governments), not to any private citizen or organization. You're free to make private agreements that sign away any rights you have, except (after the 13th amendment) your freedom.

Thanks for the clarification. Makes sense. It feels weird there aren't basic worker protections against such agreements but I think I get it - people are free or not free to enter into such agreements and receive benefits for doing so.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#128

Post by jarsin »

douche wrote: post #101
Idontreddit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait til TTIP and TPP becomes law. Times are good now, but once hilary gets elected and these "free" trade agreements gets signed, the monied masters will immediately raise interest rates and cause a recession which will give cover for businesses to lay off a large swathe of workers ( this time its going to be IT/developers/tech workers who are going to face the brunt of it ) and offshore a lot of these jobs. H1B is…

Assuming the off-shore worker is 10% as effective as the on-shore worker, which, I'll be blunt, I'm not so sure about considering the anecdata I've amassed over the years working with some of these outsourcing body shops, like Tata, HCL, Cognizant, Infosys, etc.

I have always wondered why nobody ever talks about this. Outsourcing, even to US run companies, you are looking at a massive efficency hit.

Always makes me wonder if these companies even need an IT staff at all because once they outsource almost nothing ever gets done.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#129

Post by dghughes »

In Canada Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program was changed. It was getting to the point where entire industries changed overnight out with long-time employees and in with near slave wage "TFWs" (many people just say refer to the people as TFWs).

It got so bad it became a huge political hot potato and the law was changed resulting in many TFWs disappearing as fast as they arrived.

The law here was similar to the TFW laws in the US and it was abused the same way. The law was meant as a way businesses could get help by hiring cheaper labour if they couldn't find local workers. But of course hiring someone at $5/hour versus $11/hour is strong motivation for a business to cheat.

This was every industry too each had its own preferred ethnicity mining (Chinese), fast food (Filipino), IT (India), agriculture (Central American). It's only now changing back to local people born in Canada.

I don't have any ill will against the TFW workers it's the businesses who are the ones who ruined the purpose of the TFW law and now have to suffer for it.

Re: Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder

#130

Post by HelloMcFly »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #82
_audakel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define "fair" in fair market wage? If foreign talent = domestic talent and foreign wage = domestic wage; is there a compelling reason to hire foreign? And if being hired = increase worker happiness, than equal pay will decrease foreign worker happiness. If all people are equal than whos happiness should we optimize for?

How do you define "fair" in fair market wage? It eventually has to come down to, "I'm an American, so I'm entitled to get paid more than everybody else on the planet for doing a given job." I find that attitude pretty disgusting, but that's just me. The same people who complain endlessly about H1Bs, outsourcing, and cheap foreign labor will then cheerfully drive to Wal-Mart and buy a new DVD player for $12. It will n…

> It eventually has to come down to, "I'm an American, so I'm entitled to get paid more than everybody else on the planet for doing a given job."

Sure, if you don't want to think critically about the issue at all. Absolutely agree under that circumstance. But since many foreign workers are not able to job shop, they become a lower-cost source of labor that depresses wages for everyone (other foreign workers included) because their commitment to their host company is like a figurative gun to the head. I have literally no problems with the H1B system except for when companies bring them on primarily to lower their own personnel costs. I don't even mind when companies use them despite there being existing labor in the talent pool for them (which is usually the case, despite protestations), but then to pay them below going market rate* is my issue.

I'm not a software engineer here like most, though I dabble for fun. I am, however, experienced in labor market analysis and workforce planning. And, again, I don't care how many foreign workers any given organization has provided they aren't used primarily as a cost-reduction mechanism (if they are onshore). If a company wants you to work in America they should pay you like an American.

*This isn't a terribly fuzzy metric. Typical compensation for a given job in a given geography is readily accessible. Market-specific salary surveys, benchmarked by contribution level, are a transactional norm for any company with a competent compensation team. They typically guide vs. determine and are often 18 months out of date (at least in my experience), but they're not a white whale and very useful.

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